Memento

Christopher Nolan is probably the biggest director for geeks at the moment. With the double whammy of The Dark Knight and Inception, everyone's eagerly waiting for his next move, directing the poorly named The Dark Knight Rises, the third and supposedly final Batman movie for Nolan. It's going to be huge for him.

But it wasn't always like this for Nolan. Back in 1998, he directed a small independent movie, Following, in which he tampered with chronological storytelling and told a story of a writer and a thief. And this movie lead him to Memento, arguably Nolan's masterpiece.

Memento's story is fairly simple. Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is a man looking for his wife's murderer. Leonard's problem is that he got injured in the same attack that killed his wife and is unable to make new memories. Like he says, everything fades.

Based on a story by Jonathan Nolan, Christopher's brother, what the movie does brilliantly is working the two timelines of Leonard's story, one in black and white moving forwards and the other in in color moving backwards. What could very well be extremely complicated is handled masterfully in directing and editing. Both timelines add to each other and make for a very compelling storytelling. From the opening scene on, you're on a trip that many have tried to mimic, but no one has been able to capture again, let alone better it.

Guy Pearce is Leonard Shelby, through and through. You can see his torment, confusion and determination as he continues his search for the killer, John G. Why this man isn't a bigger star in Hollywood is a mystery to me. From brilliant roles in L.A. Confidential and Ravenous to bit parts in The Hurt Locker and The King's Speech, the guy is always on top of his game and makes his roles memorable. I, for one, would love to see this guy more on the screen. The other actors in the movie, Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss,  have good chemistry with Pearce and make it interesting to see if they're actually there to help Leonard or if they're just using him for their own benefit.

For me this all makes the movie better than Nolan's later movies. Memento is better written and tighter than The Dark Knight and Pearce's Leonard makes for a better protagonist than DiCaprio's Cobb in Inception. Nolan hasn't done a bad movie yet (his worst is Insomnia, which, while effective, is missing the edge of the original Norwegian movie), and this is the movie to beat. My rating: 10/10